Let's Aim for Historical Accuracy

January 3, 2025 by Mike Konrad

As an amateur historian -- and probably not a good one -- I go nuts when I see amateurish fictions tendered as core premises. This is no more frequently found than in Hollywood; but do not kid yourself, it is not confined to Hollywood.

The following famous movie scene (based on the play) is a case in point, one worse than most:

Camelot is unique. And we have, by far and away, the most equitable climate in all England -- Camelot (1967)

A) The King Arthur stories hail back to the collapse of Celtic Briton, after the Roman garrison left in 410 AD. England did not exist at the time.

B) King Arthur might have been based on the life of a Celtic tribal chief, who fought the Anglo-Saxons (the proto-English). The English were not the heroes.

C) The Medieval castle in the far background of the movie scene would not have existed at that time.

D) South Britain rarely has hard freezes as the movie shows. The Gulf Stream usually keeps London above freezing in winter. Miserably raw, but rarely snow and ice buildup on the trees.

E) The only thing the movie got right -- probably by accident -- was casting Richard Harris, an Irishman and Celt, in the role. Especially since Artuir mac Áedán, a sixth-century Gaelic Scot, the grandson of an Irish king, is the best possible candidate for the real Arthur (that link is great, but it also erroneously shows medieval castles). And even that speculation about Artuir mac Áedán is questionable.

It is not just King Arthur. Historical idiocies have led civilizations to war.

In the 7th century, the Eastern Roman Empire (they did not call themselves Byzantine) went to war with Persia, one of the reasons being for possession of the true cross, as if it even still existed at that time.

Then there is the 16th century quote, credited to Luther, condemning the idiocies of relics and pilgrimages. “Eighteen out of twelve apostles are buried in Spain.”

And lest you think I am only picking on Catholic Tradition, the Anglican (Protestant) Church has opened up a pilgrimage center at Santiago de Compostela, where tradition has the remains of Saint James buried under the Catholic Cathedral, except that the Catholic Church admits that Saint James might not be buried there. Luther must be rolling over in his grave.

The authenticity of the sacred relic of Compostela has been questioned and is still doubted. -- New Advent (Catholic Encyclopedia)

Of course, there are other mistakes, but the grandest mistake of all is Islam.

It is now coming out into the popular realm that the historicity of Mohammed may be a total fabrication. Not merely a distortion, but a total fabrication. Robert Spencer has written a polemic questioning the whole historicity of Islam’s founder. And not just Robert Spencer, but Dr. Jay Smith.

As Dr. Jay Smith points out, in the 19th and 20th centuries, Christianity was subjected to higher criticism, in which much of its basic history was questioned. Though the academic assaults were brutal, in the end, Christianity held up, as one by one, its critics were shown wrong. For ex: The historicity of Pontius Pilate was doubted until 1961, when the Pilate Stone was discovered in Caesarea, Israel.

Not so with Islam.

When Western academics finally started applying higher criticism to Islam, unlike Christianity, Islam quickly folded like a deck of cheap cards. The Muslims cannot handle this.

The late Dr. Patricia Crone established the impossibility of Mecca being the ancient major city that Islam says it was.

Modern Mecca is completely missing from all maps, inscriptions, trade notes, graffiti, official documents and church records for the period up to the middle of the 8th Century... -- Did Mecca Exist At The Time Of Muhammad?

And not just Dr. Crone, but Dan Gibson has discovered the same problem.

The Quran does not even mention Mecca, but rather uses the term Bekkah.

Early mosques pointed to Petra -- a city hundreds of miles north -- not to Mecca.

The Quran describes Mecca with olive trees, which cannot grow in Mecca, but can grow in Petra.

This is not a minor issue. No one doubts that Jerusalem existed during the times of the prophets and Jesus. If Mecca did not exist as a city in the 7th century, the whole story of Islam collapses.

The original record of Mohammed was MHMD (ancient Arabic left out the vowels). This could mean “anointed one;” and as Dr. Smith points out, would be a title, not a name, and could actually be a reference to Jesus, not Mohammed.

[T]he Abbasids, who came to power in 749 AD pretty much destroyed all the records of the "hated" Umayyads, and with it any references to an evolving prophet named Muhammad. What we can say is that the Muhammad we know today is not the MHMD of the 7th century Jesus Christ, nor the MHMD of History, nor the Muhammad of the Umayyads, but was a creation of the Abbasids, post 750 AD. It was that Muhammad whom they then placed in a city called Mecca, who they say received a book called the Qur'an, and who then became the model and paradigm for every Muslim everywhere and for every place and time. - MHMD [09] Muhammad was JESUS' TITLE, then the Abbasids made him a PROPHET? (In the video description.

It turns out that originally the Arabs may have been following a dissident form of Christianity (Nestorianism).

A war among different Arab rulers led to the Abbasid dynasty taking over, which then erased Jesus altogether from the records and replaced him with a Mohammed created out of whole cloth. But on inspection, that whole story falls apart.

Even the Kaaba (the cube) seems to have been moved from Petra to Mecca. The Muslim practice of walking around the Kaaba seems to have been copied from the story of the Jews circling the city of Jericho. In fact, Islam is a plagiarized copy of Judaism and Christianity, not merely in text, but in practice. And a poor copy at that.

Our academics were quick to jump on the anti-Christian bandwagon when higher criticism was first applied. They were not so quick to admit their mistakes when evidence surfaced that Christianity held up. However, academia is quite silent as the enormous body of evidence is piling up against Islam. And this evidence is of a qualitative character worse.

The Bible was initially criticized for lack of evidence. Only slowly did the evidence for the Bible come in. Islam, however, fails -- not due to lack of evidence -- but due to contradicting evidence.

For ex: How could Mohammed have visited Al Aqsa mosque in his lifetime, when there were no mosques in Jerusalem during his lifetime? Jesus visited the temple in the Bible, but no one doubts the temple existed during Jesus’ lifetime. How could the Quran mention olives trees when they don’t grow in Mecca?

Ancient geography, ancient grammar, ancient languages, and the archaeological records destroy Islam.

Our major institutions know this, and quietly keep silent. Why?

Because of fear.

Patricia Crone was threatened. She had to move to America. Because so many of our universities take money from Arab plutocracies, they are loathe to make an issue of this. In other words, academia is bought off. Even the BBC had to pull its documentary criticizing Islam’s origin story off the air -- after Muslims complained. One has to find it on the internet, now.

The story of Mohammed, if he even existed at all, is an Arabic version of King Arthur, greatly removed from whatever actually happened.

Was there a real King Arthur? Possibly, but not the medieval knight of legend, but rather a sixth-century Scottish tribal chief who died in battle. A failure. Was there a Mohammed? Likely not, not unless some otherwise forgotten cult leader was merged into Abbasid fabrications, but further removed from truth than King Arthur is.

At the start, I said that Hollywood was a major enabling contributor to historical fiction. It appears now that academia is as well.

Mike Konrad, who still struggles with Spanish, is a frustrated web designer and is presently trying to get a humorous short story of his published: “The Pirate of Gaza.”